On a Mission to Unmask Pretenders to Military Glory By PAM BELLUCK Roy Inman for The New York Times Mary and Chuck Schantag of Skidmore, Mo., have answered thousands of queries about possible impostors.

The Associated Press In April, Senator Ben Nelson pinned a Purple Heart on Timothy R. Webster in a ceremony in Columbus, Neb.

Susana Raab for The New York Times Larry Bailey, a freelance fraud-hunter, raised questions about Mr. Webster's record.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last April, in a dignified ceremony meant to honor a war hero, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska pinned a Purple Heart on Timothy R. Webster, who stood humbly wearing a large eagle insignia, the kind worn only by members of the Navy's elite Sea-Air-Land units, the Seals.

Mr. Webster, 26, of Columbus, Neb., had told Senator Nelson's office that he had been wounded in the Persian Gulf in 1994, and he had presented a letter on Navy stationery saying he won a Purple Heart.

But Mr. Webster was not counting on the likes of Larry Bailey.

Captain Bailey, a former Seal commander, got wind of Mr. Webster after his picture appeared in the Columbus newspaper. Captain Bailey checked a database he maintains of members of the Seals, found no Timothy Webster and alerted Senator Nelson's office, which asked the Navy to investigate.

This week, the Navy gave the senator its verdict: Mr. Webster "did not receive Seal training, he was not wounded in combat and is not a recipient of the Purple Heart Medal."

Senator Nelson's office said Mr. Webster was a radio operator in the Gulf. When reached by phone, Mr. Webster said he would not comment until he received records he had requested from the Navy.

Captain Bailey, 62, of Mount Vernon, Va., is part of a growing network of people who have made it their business to sniff out those who lie about their military service.

The ranks of fraud hunters have grown in response to what appears to be a surge of wartime fabrication, especially involving the Vietnam War. The most recent notable example was Joseph J. Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, who said he had been a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam, when he had actually spent the war teaching military history at West Point. But there have been hundreds of others.

"We see it everywhere," said Tom Corey, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, who said the group discovered this year that several members had falsely claimed in the organization's membership directory that they had been prisoners of war. "A lot of times they say they're Navy Seals or special forces or POW's, and a lot of them never left stateside."

Most fraud hunters are veterans motivated by outrage. Operating mostly through Web sites and on their own dime, they scrutinize claims in small-town newspaper articles and in membership rosters of veterans groups.

They also field an increasing number of calls and e-mail messages from people doubtful about the wartime résumé of a co-worker or a daughter's fiancé.

"It's an epidemic," said Mary Schantag, who with her husband, Chuck, exposes impostors from their farmhouse in Skidmore, Mo.

Last year, the Schantags say, they logged 7,000 queries about military claims, up from 22 in 1998.

"There's a very active hunt 'em down and hang 'em up kind of thing," said B. G. Burkett, a Dallas stockbroker who helped catalyze the movement to unmask pretenders with his 1998 book, "Stolen Valor."

The fraud hunters are sometimes accused of being overzealous, determined not only to expose fakers but also to get them fired or ruin their lives. Critics cite the case of Adm. Jeremy M. Boorda, chief of naval operations, who killed himself in 1996 after revelations that he wore Vietnam decorations he had not earned.

The debunkers are partly the offspring of the Internet, which makes it easy to check claims against lists of Medal of Honor winners, prisoners of war and other elite veterans.

But they are also responding to a growing eagerness of people to associate themselves with Vietnam, whether they were there or not. The war's image has undergone an overhaul as time has soothed society's bitterness, as movies and television have depicted Vietnam veterans as sympathetic victims or admirable warriors, and as politicians and business leaders with solid Vietnam records have become models of success and dignity.

Mr. Burkett, who is known as Jug and has an admittedly unremarkable Vietnam record as an ordnance officer, said he had helped expose the fictitious military stories of about 1,800 people, including Wes Cooley, a former Republican congressman from Oregon, who was forced out of office after claiming falsely that he had served with the Army Special Forces in the Korean War.

Captain Bailey, who commanded the Seal training center, said counterfeit solders often had little trouble passing for the real thing.

"Our society is so mobile and so reluctant to check out anybody's bona fides, that we just accept it," said Captain Bailey, who said more than 7,000 Seal pretenders had been uncovered, with about 650 posted on a Wall of Shame at cyberseals.org.

Embellishers have included Tim Johnson, the Toronto Blue Jays manager, who was fired after his stories of search-and-destroy missions in Vietnam collided with the reality that he never saw combat. Darrow Tully, former publisher of The Arizona Republic and a friend of Senator John McCain's, the former prisoner of war, admitted that he lied about flying jet fighters in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Then there were the two top officials of a Vietnam War Museum in San Antonio who falsely claimed they had served in Vietnam. And the eight men in medal-bedecked camouflage who a few years ago visited the Vietnam Memorial on Veterans Day and Memorial Day and swapped fake stories of being in the Seals.

"Half of them had eyesight so bad their glasses made them look like a frog looking up through a block of ice," said Steve Waterman, a Maine lobsterman and Navy veteran, who helped expose them. "I don't even know if those within the group knew the others were all phonies."

Fraud hunters are most incensed by people who publicize fictitious exploits in the media or use them to get elected, promoted or wangle undeserved veterans' benefits.

Donald R. Nicholson, a retired police chief of Amelia, Ohio, said the prospect of additional benefits prompted him to claim he had been a prisoner of war, even buying fake medals and military papers and persuading the Army to award him the Distinguished Service Cross.

Others seek to be heroes, giving inspiring speeches at schools or becoming respected members of veterans groups.

William T. Whitely, a University of Oklahoma professor who founded an organization to prepare students for Navy Seal training, admitted in March that he had been lying for a decade by claiming he had been a Seal member and the recipient of Silver and Bronze Stars. Mr. Whitely, caught after a real Seal veteran reported him, said he had told himself his fictional story was inspiring to students.

"I never claimed being a Seal in the beginning, Mr. Whitely said, "It just kind of happened."

Some play on the image of the troubled and traumatized veteran, even using it to win sympathy from a judge or jury. Joseph Yandle, who was convicted of killing a Boston liquor store owner, had his life sentence commuted in 1995 after convincing the governor, the state pardon board and national media that he had harrowing combat experiences as a decorated marine in Vietnam. Three years after Mr. Yandle was released, Mr. Burkett proved he had only been a clerk in Okinawa, and Mr. Yandle was put back in prison.

There is debate about how many people try to use fake claims to take advantage of government programs and veterans' groups. Bob Epley, associate deputy under secretary for policy and program management at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said the department's screening system worked well.

"We don't think that this is a problem of magnitude," Mr. Epley said.

But a criminal investigator for the department, speaking on condition of anonymity, said military masquerading was "probably extensive."

And Mr. Corey said embellishers "go through chapters of V.F.W. or V.V.A. or some other organization, and you usually don't find out until they try to rise within the organization or if they're running for office."

Fraud hunters say they can verify claims of the highest military honors or elite service quickly because those groups are relatively small. Less extraordinary claims take longer, often months, as debunkers wait for a claimant's file to be sent by the military records center.

When they believe they have proof of a pretender, they post the name on line and sometimes confront the person with phone calls or scathing e- mail messages. Some people apologize; others stick by their claims.

"The only thing we have in our corner is humiliation," said Ms. Schantag, who recently discovered that a man who claimed to be a prisoner of war and gave a keynote address at a Vietnam Memorial Traveling Wall exhibit was apparently a prisoner only of his own fantasies.

Some fraud hunters offer tips on spotting a pretender. Beware, they say, of people who boast of grisly combat or say they are not on official rosters because their duties were top secret. And watch out for people who know too many details.

"I'm convinced some of them could pass a polygraph test," Mr. Burkett said. "They often know more about the battle, they study it and work at it much harder than the guy who was there. Because the guy who was there only remembers six feet on either side."

Go Back